Member-only story
A boy passed by, sparing only a glance for me at first. With a beckon, I managed to divide his attention from the other “salesmen”.
“Be careful, mind your manners. It shall be tearful, beware the aanders.”, I told the boy. “What’s a aander”?, he stopped and asked. “You will know when the time is right”, I said.
This exchange was no different from the hundreds of others that had occurred before it. Most simply looked at me like I was crazy. I wouldn’t contradict them. But some, they listened. Heeded my warnings. Sometimes, nothing happened. Sometimes, something did.
That was when I got my reward. Those people, they were grateful. They would come back to me. Give me gifts, sometimes a share of treasure. I had no way of knowing if they truly were in danger, but if I “warned” enough people, the odds would eventually end up in my favour.
Something inevitably happened to someone. When that happened, I wasn’t crazy anymore, not to them. Of course I would get found out eventually. That was when I moved on, hoping for more gullible victims. Our planet is a large thing, and there are plenty of places where no one has heard of you.
Still, the reward was not why I did it. I did it because it was fun. That was all. No more, no less. Seeing the dumbfounded expressions on people’s faces, sometimes hearing about how…